Developing Father-Son relationship with your girlfriend's dad...

So in one of my story, the main character is a teenager (let's call him Sergei)who grew up without a father (he left his family) and barely seeing his mother. Sergei's family was poor, and her mother worked many hours and ended up dying of overwork and lack of health care. He came to resent his father and respected his mother for all her hard work. However, deep-down in his heart, he have been wishing for a father figure.

Then he meets a girl (let's call him Ellie) and they ended up being pretty together. Soon, he is introduced to her family, where he meets her father (let's call him Jack). Interestingly enough, Jack has only three daughters. Although he is genuinely happy with his girls, he has been wanting a son, which he and his wife never managed to get. Also, his wife can be awfully controlling of both him and the girls, and at times he want some friends and/or allies who would stand for him.

So when Sergei and Jack meet and talk for a bit, they realize that they share their love for Ellie (although different kind, obviously) and their sense of honor and justice. Soon enough, they practically develop father-son relationship. He grows close simultaneously to Ellie and Jack over the course of the story.

Now, Sergei and Jack developing a close relationship (friendship? family? I'm not even sure what to call it) is supposed to be part of cure, something to fill the empty hole in Sergei's heart and grow further.and a source of fuzziness But, what are some possible side effects of this kind of relationship?

How does one “die of overwork”? I think I know what you mean, but that’s still kind of a weird way to say it.

More importantly…

What do you mean by “side effects”? I mean, if Jack loves Sergei, then he will eventually get around to introducing him to other important people in his life, like his friends and maybe even coworkers and stuff like that. Sergei would feel comfortable talking about his past. I mean, all kinds of things could happen; do you mean specifically bad side effects or wha?

edited 3rd May '15 11:38:47 PM by nekomoon14

Physical and mental fatigue resulting from spending too much time exerting oneself, not enough time resting, and an accumulation of stress.

That resulting in the body's ability to handle illnesses and other such stuff being much lowered, and with the person still pushing themselves to work even when they are feeling unwell it's easy for what would have been a mere cold to become something much more serious, something that requires competent and accessible health care to get out of, which it is happens to be not be.

That's how one dies of overwork. At least that's how it happens outside of katorgas or similar places, where I'm sure the process is a bit different.

Anyway, on the topic of ... well, the topic, I'll say this: as far as the relationship between Sergei and his future father-in-law is concerned, and as far as the process through which they'd realised that they might or might not want family of a certain sort goes, actions speak, feelings whisper, and words are silent.

What do I even mean there? Well, what I mean is that people generally start treating each other like family because of things that are happening that involve them both (or them all, if it's about more than two people). And then, sometimes it simply happens because of one or more of those people feeling in a certain way and simply not realising that it's happening or otherwise not minding it (you can observe it happening with certain older people who'd lost their children, how they attach those feelings to other younger people they know and start treating some of them like their children even though nothing is being said about it).

But words ... compared to the above, words are empty. Oh, sure, words can help if the other factors are already present, but it isn't a talk that causes such a shift, not unless there's something already to base the shift on and the talk only serves to assure both sides that the other side will not mind the shift.

So if Sergei and his father-in-law–to–be simply met each other and somehow, accidentally, treated each other like a father and a son without nothing being spoken about it, and then after a few weeks or months they'd tried to talk about it and thus realised that neither of them minds and that led to the shift in behaviour (to one that is openly, rather than merely by chance, a father–son relationship), then I'd find it plausible. But not when talking is the very first thing they do and the relationship twists based on nothing.

Now, as far as the consequences go, you have to realise (and probably already have) that none of those have to happen, that what the exact consequences will be depends from person to person because everyone approaches others a bit differently.

But what you have here is that, effectively, a boy dating a girl was sort of made her brother. That's a possible source of awkwardness between them, of awkwardness between him and his future father-in-law that is not about the relationship but rather about the awkwardness of the relationship, of potential conflicts between the girl and her sisters or the boy and the girl's sisters or even the father and his daughters. And then there's Sergei possibly feeling guilty for barging into the family in more than one way and actually spending more time there than a mere boyfriend would.

And of course there are also consequences from outside the family, like potential rumours that the boy had gotten the girl (or all the girls, even) pregnant because there's no other reason he'd be spending that time there otherwise. Or, going the other way, rumours that the girls' father had taken the boy in because he no longer cares about his daughters. Or other crazy rumours that people decide to perpetuate. And the two I'd given out as examples are not necessarily mutually exclusive because rumours work in a weird way.

Good points. I particularly didn't think about the first one. That would be indeed very awkward, all right.

Whoa. Like, that IS a crazy rumor, all right.